There but for the grace of God go I.
It's one of my favorite phrases. I love it because it incorporates two things I value: humility, or the ability to recognize that a part of personal good fortune derives from chance, luck, or God's grace, and empathy, the ability to understand directly the pain, suffering, or difficulty of another.
A friend and I had lunch together recently. She will never be rich or famous, and in fact she has to be frugal just to get by. But she is blessed with a cheerful disposition and a basic competency that allows her to live a healthy, independent life. She spent most of the lunch talking about the evening she had just spent with a couple of her friends. One of them was trapped in a relationship that was going nowhere. Her friend was in her 40s, she had spent ten years living with a boyfriend who was useless, and she wanted out but didn't have enough money to live on her own. Out of desperation she was thinking of moving back in with her parents. I told my friend that some people don't have the luxury of moving back in with their parents, and my friend surprised me by saying thank you.
She probably appreciated the fact that I remembered she had lost both of her parents when she was in her 20s, but there was more. She seemed frustrated that her friend did not appreciate how blessed she was to have parents who are still alive. And my friend appreciated that I noticed her frustration. The pain of her loss decades ago and her honest struggle to cope with it were a real contrast to her friend's feckless discomfort. Grace does not give us everything we want, nor everything we need, but it usually gives us something to work with, even if we don't always recognize it or know how to use it.
Personally, I have enough weaknesses and obsessions to make the job of staying alive an adventure, but at least I have been blessed with a body and mind that don't get addicted easily. I am thankful for that because I know people who suffer from substance abuse and other addictions and I have seen the way addictions can destroy people's lives. The most horrifying personal example was my mother's life, which flamed out in a spectacular tragedy of self-destruction fed by alcoholism, but all around us we can see less extreme examples of lives that have been diminished by addiction.
People sometimes talk of addiction as a problem of will. To be sure, will can play an important part in overcoming addiction, but for some people no amount of will could ever be enough. For some people, it really is all about the way their bodies and minds are put together. Treatments for addiction do work, and addictions can often be cured, but it is painfully obvious that avoiding or overcoming addiction is simply easier for some people than it is for others. Some people become great athletes or great geniuses. It is easier for them to run fast or to think through difficult problems. Sure, concentration and will power might increase their skill, but no one is silly enough to say that their greatness is simply a matter of will. Addiction is fundamentally the same, and it is silly to think it is primarily a problem of will. Whether our lives are easy or hard, we have no choice but to live them through the bodies and minds that have been given to us. Our bodies and minds limit us, but they also sustain us.
I'd like to take credit for the fact that I don't get addicted. I'd like to brag that I have superior strength of will. But I can't, it's simply not true. It's just the way I came into this world. It's just a matter of grace.
Perhaps we can take a moment to thank some of the people who have graced our lives.
Thank you to:
• pastordan for getting this wonderful, chaotic ball of love known as Brothers and Sisters rolling (and to all of the people who have kept it rolling)
• the people who keep on trying, even when they are in pain
• our real brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and other family members who help keep us going
• our friends who still care for us even when we make it hard for them
• our high school teachers
• the people who work in hard, dangerous, dirty, boring jobs to give us access to the good things in life
• the people who take the time to help us when we are in need
• the people who stand up to injustice, even when it hurts
• the people who pay the taxes that support the public services we need and enjoy
Is there anyone you would like to thank?